California LGBTs received early presents from the Grinch last week when Richard Rios filed not one but two proposed initiatives with the state attorney general's office concerning SB 48, the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act that, once it goes into effect next year, requires public schools to include the historical contributions of LGBT Americans in their curriculum. One of Rios's proposals would repeal SB 48, while the other, called the Equality in Education Act, would allow parents and guardians to opt their children out of social science and family life courses (state law already allows students to opt out of health curriculum).
A hateful aspect of the repeal SB 48 initiative is that it just strikes LGBT Americans from the act, which also includes social science instruction pertaining to contributions from people with disabilities and other ethnicities. It is blatantly anti-gay and doesn't pretend to be otherwise.
It remains to be seen whether either proposal gains traction and the required number of signatures to get placed on the 2012 ballot. But the community shouldn't sit around complacently in the meantime. And since Equality California is without an executive director, as well as several other key staff positions, and lacks a robust bank account, it would behoove other LGBT organizations to step up to the plate.
So far, the anti-gay group behind the failed referendum on SB 48 is not involved with these latest efforts. That attempt, led by longtime anti-gay activist Karen England, had problems collecting signatures and failed to qualify for the ballot. But initiative rules are different from referendum rules in that proponents are given more time to collect signatures. We don't know how many were actually gathered for the referendum, but we doubt it was the 497,000 that England's group claimed earlier this year.
When the SB 48 referendum effort launched, EQCA had just hired its executive director. But he has since departed. The power vacuum created by EQCA's implosion creates an urgent need for other groups to begin the campaign to fight these initiatives. But we're not certain that any have the infrastructure and resources necessary to effectively do so. The Gay-Straight Alliance Network would seem a natural fit, since it works with schools and student groups. But it's a small organization that probably doesn't have the capacity to mount a decline to sign campaign or other statewide coordinating efforts. It's leadership is also in flux, with an interim director at the helm who can't even return phone calls to local LGBT media outlets.
State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), the author of SB 48, told us this week that LGBT advocates need to monitor the initiative proposals as they move forward and he also suggested, correctly, that decisions will soon need to be made about mounting an aggressive decline to sign campaign. That's something EQCA has always shied away from, so this time grassroots activists would need to take the lead. We believe that when potential voters are told what these initiatives are really about, they will decline to sign the petitions. Success will depend on committed volunteers, so our community organizations need to start working now. We know from previous anti-gay battles that our opponents will stop at nothing to collect signatures, even going so far as to present deceitful talking points when they're at shopping malls and other public areas.
In short, Rios's efforts must be taken seriously by the LGBT community; we cannot wait until these homophobic initiatives are on the ballot to mount a defense. In fact, the community must go on offense.